The most common response to telling someone you’re vegan is an almost instinctual defensive reflex. “I could never do that,” your friend insists, eyebrows narrowed, just to clarify in case you’re angling toward any sort of recruitment effort. No? It hasn’t been that hard, really, you explain. I mean, you really couldn’t live without meat?

“I guess I could survive that,” your friend relents. “But I genuinely wouldn’t know what to do without cheese.”

Nobody ever says they just couldn’t live without eggs, even though eggs are delicious, cheap, and easy to use, deliver a host of nutritional benefits, and serve a great number of technical purposes in baking and cooking. Cheese is the animal product that, for most Americans at least, sinks its hooks most firmly into the heart as both a treat and a staple. The very idea of vegan pizza just makes most people feel sad.